Small Scale Project

Research Methods
Assessment 1 Brief

Assessment 1: Project Output 1

Assessment Description

Summary: Each student is required to select a topic relevant to their professional / business interests and conduct a pilot study or a small scale exploratory research into this topic.

Specifically, you will be expected to formulate a specific research question, identify, describe and justify the methods used and proceed to conduct a small scale research project into the topic chosen. In the proposal, each student will be required to submit a topic for research relevant to their professional / business interests and needs and after from a list of suggested topics compiled by the module leader or suggested by students.
You will be expected to formulate a relevant specific research question. Then you will need to identify, clearly describe and justify the methods you will use to answer the research question and then conduct a small scale research investigation where collected data is analysed using appropriate analytic techniques.
You may use software tools to help with the analysis, for example quantitatively using analytics software such as Minitab, SPSS, STATA etc., or qualitatively using QDAS such as Nvivo or ATLAS.ti. MS Excel is also a popular spread sheet tool for basic data analysis. Note that the emphasis should be on the understanding of the data analytic process irrespective of what tools are actually used.
The project output should incorporate elements of (i) an introduction, (ii) a relevant literature review, (iii) details on the study design, (iv) explanation of the analysis performed and discussion of the results; please refer to the Assessment Criteria document for more details. It should be presented in the form of a portfolio of not more than 4800 words, using appropriate reporting conventions and ensuring all sources are cited and referenced using the Harvard style.

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